Right now, I only want to say that Greenpeace are doing a great job in order to save our planet. I also want to thank The Economist for giving them a chance to spread their important information. In the name of Mother Nature, Thank you all very much!

Is there really demand ? Are consumers really ready to pay more ? The only reason why companies buy certified palm oil is because the pressure of NGO's, not because consumer wants.
Once I had a meeting with a big retailer chain, which stated that certified palm oil should be sold at same price as non-certified as it is a commodity.
Consumers nor buyers are willing to pay a premium price, and they will only do if they see negative advertisement on their brands.Last year with a very low demand of certified oil clearly demonstrates that buyers have no real commitment.
Last year WWF did a campaign against users who don't buy certified oil. Only after Greenpeace campaign the demand went up, and now supply and demand is quite in balance. However price for producer is even not 1 % more then non certified oil.
Production cannot rice that fast, to get certified it takes more then six months of hard work and nearly one year to get the certificate.
I don't think that it is a secret that the NGO's get their funding from organisations which want to protect soya, rapeseed and sunflower oil, such as European community and interest groups in the western world.
Any hectare of palm oil produces 5 times more vegetable oil then a hectare of soya, canola or sunflower oil. Palm oil does not receives subsidies from government, pay taxes and provide a livelihood for more then 2 million persons. Compare that to the soya industry, and every logic person will promote palm oil.

You hit at the nub of the problem when you say demand for a mere 2 tons of certified palm oil is sluggish. Won't there be a rush to supply more if there is demand? Shouldn't Greenpeace and others be more interested in seeing that users buy only certified oil if they are not to stand accused of loving animals more than the many poor people whose livelihood depends on the industry?

I always am curious how and where these so-called green NGOs get hold of the funding to launch spectacular stunts and expensive advertising campaigns.

This discussion is very interesting, but some comment.
First the world demand and supply of vegetable oil is quite balanced. So a reduction in consumption of palmoil in Europe or the States, will increase their soya oil consumtion. As such another buyer as China or India will be obliged to buy more palm oil. this will not save the forest.
The only way to reduce new area coming into production is to reduce consumption. In the USA yearly consumption of vegetable oil is 56 liters compared to less then 20 liters in Asia.
So the greens should campaign against fast food and eating habits in the western world and then the rain-forest will be saved. But yes it is easier to take a living from poor Asians then to change your own lifestyle.
Oilpalm is a very sustainable crop. In Indonesia there are plantations of 100 year old, with more then four rotations of palm oil.
I also do not agree that workers on plantation are exploited. most of these workers live in good conditions. As the labour market is free and there is a shortage of labour in Indonesia and Malaysia, I don't think that an exploited worker would stay.
I have seen more exploited workers on european farms, poor illegal Africans or east-Europeans who are forced to do hard labour, without protective material. Please ask your media to make a film of the situation there.

Add one more (chilling) aspect to this story. I Colombia, the production of palm oil is linked to internal displacement, and paramilitaries acting in tandem with the army and a handful of wealthy businessmen. Read this for more info (in Spanish)http://www.lasillavacia.com/historia/16313

It would seem that Unilever is getting its "props" for promising to use sustainable palm oil as well as cutting carbon emissions and carbon intensity. Just today, the FTSE carbon strategy index came out, putting Unilever at the top of the 350 largest UK companies when it comes to responding to climate change.

The best way to reduce consumption of palm oil is to reduce the number of consumers. If only people would have fewer babies, then the world population would shrink and the demand for these and all our other precious resources would shrink with it.

The Corporations targetted are using palm oil mainly in cosmetics which are dispensable. But here in India, palm oil has replaced the use of gingelly, and peanut oils as cooking medium, especially among the poor and lower middle classes. The more shocking thing is that it is supplied in ration shops. And, there are, as usual, two different views about its effect on health, promoted by vested interests. How far are Governments involved in the issue? It seems that it is high time there is an international body to look into the matter dispassionately, and force the Governments into right channels of action

Regarding the statistic about 38% of oil from 5% of land with palm. This may be misleading. What is the value of the non-oil portion of the palm harvest? In the case of soybean, the meal is used as feed for example, due to its caloric and nutritional value.

I regularly play golf at a course that has been built on a palm plantation, there are many such courses in Malaysia and Indonesia that are built on plantation land, In fact I would go so far as to say most of them are although I don't have the stats to back this up certainly off the top of my head I can think of at least 10 that are and none that are not on or next to plantations. Should we be banning golf in these countries or at least refusing to play with golfers from Indonesia or Malaysia ? Or should we be waiting until they are good enough to compete with western golfers and then ban them when they are better, hang on what about Tiger he is half Thai, maybe the European PGA should fund a protest group against him.....

The reasoning ignores simple economics. New land is taken into production because it is more economical than letting it lay bare. Indeed: Wildlife that is not perceived as an asset nor a source of income is economically bare.

Oil palm will occupy this spot if the price for oil palm is the best option, and believe me, knowing the crop it is probably also the most sustainable option amongst the alternatives. If the demand for oil palm shrinks, this top spot will be taken by something probably even more damaging. Local food production for instance.

The biofuel issue is just a compound in the market setup, and does not change the big picture: as long as the current land use is less economical than the alternatives, the great apes are under threat. (This is also true in Africa...).

Railing against Oil Palms will only give a temporary slowdown. The real alternative is developing the importance of the wildlife. This could be through economical development or just nationalistic pride. Not by singling out just one option.

You have it backwards: green activists are not doing their best to turn palm oil into a commercial liability. I'd expect Fox News to blame the messenger -- I'm disappointed to see Fox style news headlines soiling The Economist.

The palm oil industry is guilty of the most heinous ecological atrocities imaginable, including the systematic genocide of orangutans. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are the only place where these gentle, intelligent creatures live, and the cultivation of palm oil has directly led to the brutal deaths of thousands of individuals as the industry has expanded into previously undisturbed areas of rainforest.

When the forest is cleared, adult orangutans are typically shot on sight. These peaceful, sentient beings are beaten, burned, mutilated, tortured and often eaten. Babies are torn off their dying mothers so they can be sold on the black market as illegal pets to wealthy families who see them as status symbols of their own power and prestige. This has been documented time and again.

If nothing is done to protect orangutans, they will be extinct in just a few years. Visit the Orangutan Outreach website to learn more: www.redapes.org

You've covered most of the bases on this palm oil issue. However, you've omitted the most glaring one - the motive for the anti-palm oil campaigns for green groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth!

I've read "The Anatomy of Environmental Fraud: The anti-palm oil scams of Greenpeace and FOE" in Palmhugger.org and I'm now convinced and shocked to learn that the real reason for all these anti-palm oil noise has been staring us in the face all along - trade protectionism!

The article exposes the funding that the EU Commission has been extending to FOE and the curious coincidence of the anti-palm oil hype from FOE increasing concommittantly with the funding increases from the EU. The EU now funds 70% of the annual budget of FOE Europe and it is no secret that the EU has to protect their edible oil crops like rapeseed and sunflower, which unfortunately, has a productivity that pales in comparison to palm oil (just 10% that of palm oil).

It is indeed sad to see Greenpeace and FOE's fall from grace and to see them degenerating into twisted lobbies against palm oil just to fill their coffers!

I have viewed several documentary films on palm oil production.
One aspect of palm oil production not mentioned in the excellent Economist article is that the workers are exploited, and are refused even the simple use of rubber /plastic gloves to protect their hands from the effects of noxious sprays around the palm-oil plants. Greed is alive and well on palm oil plantations.

As "catsick" says, surely the issue should be deforestation, as only 3 out of 70 million ha of denuded tropical forest have been planted with oil palms. The culprit in this shameful development is not so much Unilever et al as the non-policies of the earlier Indonesian governments.
Another aspect, less essential in the Indonesian case, is the biofuel madness, which in many other instances infringes on third world food supplies and regional ecologies.

If only it were so easy! There is a reason that millions of previously logged acres are bare - namely that when the forest is gone, the peat dries out, the land loses fertility and nothing of value will grow.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, intensive monoculture farming of palm and other crops is the quickest way to the short-term profits which our current economic system demands. Unfortunately, the associated costs of reduced soil fertility, erosion, biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions are simply ignored by current accounting methods.

Current profits pale in comparison with the environmental and climate problems we are passing on to future generations.

“The oil palm is an efficient crop, yielding up to ten times more oil per hectare than soyabeans, rapeseed or sunflowers. On 5% of the world’s vegetable-oil farmland it produces 38% of output, more than any of these other crops. Any substitute would need more land. Its bounty makes it relatively cheap.” SO, OIL PALM PROMOTES SUSTAINABILITY; A MERE 20 PERCENT FARMLAND SPACE CAN SUPPORT GLOBAL VEGETABLE OIL REQUIREMENT!! WOW!; THEREFORE THE BALANCE 80 PERCENT FARMLAND IN DEVELOPED NATIONS SHOULD BE CONVERTED TO FOREST AGAIN ; LET'S GREEN USA AND EUROPE AGAIN; GREENPEACE... WHAT IS YOUR AGENDA REALLY? JOKE IS ON YOU GREENPEACE! HAWHAWHAW

Indonesia has logged over 70 million HA of land since the 1950's most of this land is left bare after logging and this is where all the problems arise , they now have 3 million HA of this land planted with palm thats 2% of the surface of the country for their biggest cash crop , palm is in many respects a super crop in that its easy to produce and does not use huge fossil inputs so is cheap , super efficient and healthy ( containing no transfats like soya oil its main competitior ) If the green lobby were really trying to help the world they would be promoting converting the other 95% of logged land into palm plantations and working to stop logging and the stop the cropping of fossil fuel and groundwater hogging rapeseed and soya in Europe and the US. Likewise we have no mention here that a lot of palm plantations are conversions from the massive rubber plantations planted by the colonial overlords before the war.